Doctoral Research College Officer (062018-278)

Category: Admin/Clerical | Faculty/Division: Research, Innovation and Enterprise | School: Doctoral Research | Department: Doctoral Research Team | Location: Parkside | Post Type: Full Time | Closing Date: 01 Jul 2018 | Birmingham City University is implementing an ambitious growth strategy across the continuum of Research, Innovation and Enterprise activities.  Delivery of our strategy ensures that new knowledge underpins our curriculum offerings to all students; powers innovative collaborations and partnerships with organisations of all types and delivers economic, cultural and societal impact regionally, nationally and globally. The research ambitions of the University can be summarised by the phrase “Better; Bigger; Broader and Bolder”, signalling our intention to further improve research quality; grow the numbers of research-engaged staff and post-graduate research students; ensure excellent research underpins our entire academic portfolio and to do more research in collaboration with end-users to drive innovation; address real-world problems and deliver tangible impacts. Post-graduate research students (PGRs) are an essential part of our research ambitions, adding new capacity to our research engine and contributing to our research ambitions, whilst studying for a research doctorate supervised by teams of faculty-based research-engaged academic staff. An integral part of our strategy has been the establishment of a cross-university Doctoral Research College (DRC) to support the development journeys of our doctoral student population from application to award. Working in partnership with Faculty-based PGR coordinators and academic staff, the DRC will coordinate and harmonise all aspects of doctoral student provision, to ensure our PGRs receive a high-quality experience and are equipped with a range of transferrable skills for their subsequent professional lives. We have ambitions to grow significantly our doctoral student population and to manage actively and accelerate progress of PGRs to achieve award within 4 years of full-time study. The Doctoral Research College team is led by the DRC Manager and comprises a distributed team of cross-faculty and faculty-embedded Doctoral Research College Officers and Programme Administrators (DRC) who work in partnership with academic staff to support all aspects of PGR life and administer the systems and processes that underpin doctoral studies. The (AHRC) Midlands3Cities Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) is a collaboration between the universities of Birmingham City, Birmingham, De Montfort, Leicester, Nottingham and Nottingham Trent, provides research candidates with cross-institutional mentoring, expert supervision including cross-institutional supervision where appropriate, subject specific and generic training, and professional support in preparing for a career. BCU’s work in the consortium is audited by RCUK and the officer enables us to meet our commitments to the AHRC as an RCUK-funded council. This post will focus on the support the university’s work with the AHRC-funded Midlands3Cities Doctoral Training Partnership. As part of our involvement in the DTP we committed to provided dedicated support to work with the coordinating team. This post will oversee the recruitment, progression, examination and award (including Home/EU full-time and part-time modes) for Midlands3Cities, acting as liaison between the BCU Doctoral Research College, Nottingham University and the other four universities in the partnership. The officer will organise BCU’s contribution to the rigorous selection process for awards, prepare reports on student progress, administer additional awards, and coordinate the work of thirty supervising academics. You should be educated to first degree level (or equivalent combination of professional qualifications, skills and experience) and have experience of student administration in the UK higher education sector, ideally with PGRs, and be comfortable working in a matrix management structure.  If you are committed to delivering a high quality service to support PGR students from application to award and feel you could contribute to the development of a high quality Doctoral Research College, we would like to hear from you. Please apply with a CV and covering letter through the BCU Jobs website, explaining clearly how your skills and experience match the requirements of the role and how you could contribute personally to the success of the Doctoral Research College and the wider success of the Research, Innovation and Enterprise Team. We look forward to hearing from you.